Ivy League Speaking Tour Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, we’ve been talking about this Ivy League tour that you had an opportunity to go on and speak to faculty at Ivy League colleges. When we left off you were headed to Dartmouth. Talk about that a bit.

DR. CRAIG: That's right. From Yale, we drove up to the lovely little town of Hanover, New Hampshire where Dartmouth College is located. David Haig did not join me for this event so I went solo at Dartmouth. The Dartmouth College event was also somewhat different in that it had a representation from what one calls the “town and gown;” that is to say, both business people and community leaders as well as people who were professors at the university. There were also some African students from Nigeria and Kenya who couldn't go home on break and so attended the event. These students stayed for an hour afterwards in intense conversations about what was said. I gave my talk on the historical Adam. It went great. At my roundtable afterwards I met a political science professor from Egypt who knew of the Egyptian myths that I had mentioned in my talk as well as Egyptian monotheism under the Pharaoh Akhenaten. So that was an extremely interesting point of connection. I found that at this event, because some of the people there of course did not believe in the Bible, they had difficulty understanding that I approached the topic of the historical Adam by inquiring as to what my biblical commitments are as a Christian theologian. As the Bible-believing Christian, am I committed to the historicity of Adam and Eve? So, for example, one English professor got up and he complained that I didn't consider the viewpoints of other religions. What about Buddhism? What about Hinduism? Why am I so narrowly focused on Christianity? I wasn't inclusive enough. He also said that he thought religion is just an idea in the mind and doesn't involve an objectively existing reality. Well, that gave me the opportunity to explain some of the backstory for my talk – that it is extracted from a broader systematic theology; namely, it's the part of that systematic theology that deals with theological anthropology. But in this same work, I also deal with the doctrine of God and arguments for God's existence. Then I rattled off about six arguments for the existence of God as an objectively existing creator and designer of the universe who is the paradigm of absolute goodness. That unexpected burst of evidence for the existence of God, I think, had a real impact on the audience. At the very end of the evening, someone asked me during the Q&A time, “Where do you find meaning in life personally?” And that gave me then a chance to share a word of testimony about my relationship with God through Jesus Christ as my Creator, Redeemer, and Lover. So it was a very dramatic close to the evening with that final note.

KEVIN HARRIS: Is it safe to say that this is probably the most liberal part of the country? I mean even more so than California?

DR. CRAIG: I gotta tell you. I just felt that I was swimming in the progressive woke sort of culture. Yes, it just drenched in that sort of attitude at all of these Ivy Leagues. Yes, that was palpable.

KEVIN HARRIS: Brown University up next. Tell us all about it.

DR. CRAIG: We drove over to Providence, Rhode Island one evening to hold a roundtable with faculty there. Due to the poor amplification system in the room, I didn't use the microphone but I stood out in front of the podium and spoke extemporaneously using my 18-point outline again. That increased the personal contact with the audience and the talk once again went really well. Afterwards in our discussions around the roundtable one gentleman commented to me how clear and easy to follow the outline was and how much he really appreciated it. Seated at my table was a Hindu heart surgeon and his New Age Buddhist wife who was very talkative. The ensuing Q&A was also pretty lively. One gentleman got up and announced that he was an atheist and an anthropologist, and he complained that my talk was too narrowly focused on Christianity. What about all the other religions in the world? That gave me, again, the opportunity to explain that I approached these issues as a Christian theologian and asked whether or not my faith commitments are compatible with the best evidence of modern science concerning human origins. And I had sought to show in my talk that they are compatible. Somebody who belongs to another religious tradition is free to ask a similar question about his own faith commitments and their compatibility with modern science. I explained that such a person had better hope that his faith commitments are compatible with contemporary science, otherwise he's got a real problem with his worldview if it's inconsistent with the deliverances of modern science. Near the end of the evening came what I thought was the best question of all. The questioner said, “At the beginning of your talk, you spoke of Albert Schweitzer's quest of the historical Jesus and of your quest of the historical Adam. Which of these quests has made the most progress to date?” That gave me the opportunity to explain that hands down the most progress has been made on the quest of the historical Jesus. I explained that as a result of Richard Burridge’s showing the family resemblances between ancient biographies like Plutarch’s Lives of famous Greeks and Romans and the four Gospels that the Gospels are now widely regarded as forms of ancient biography, and as such they have a historical interest and therefore are of a different genre than myth. I also explained the Jewish reclamation of Jesus – the renewed realization that Jesus was a first century Jew and should be interpreted against that backdrop, not against the backdrop of Greco-Roman mythology. As a result, today the Gospels are widely regarded as historically credible sources for the life and the teachings of Jesus. So great progress has been made in this quest. I thought what a beautiful way to end the evening by pointing to the credibility of the Gospel accounts of Jesus.

KEVIN HARRIS: The climax of your tour was in the town of Cambridge. A roundtable event that involved the faculty of several colleges including Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and, as I understand, Peter Kreeft was there. So many people have read his Handbook of Apologetics.

DR. CRAIG: He was seated directly across from me at our table. I have to tell you, at 85 years of age, Kreeft is as sharp as a tack as ever. He got into a conversation with a faculty member on artificial intelligence who was explaining the so-called Turing test for detecting the presence of intelligence. That test was if you're unable to discern whether the responses to our questions are offered by a person or by a machine then we should infer from such linguistic ability the presence of intelligence. Kreeft retorted, “That seems to me just obviously fallacious!” And he began to cross-examine this professor. Kreeft pointed out that from the indistinguishability of external behavior you cannot justifiably infer an intelligence behind the behavior. He summed it up by saying with regard to computer intelligence, “There's no one there.” I thought that pithy comment just summed it all up. No matter how good a computer can mimic human behavior, the fact remains there's no one there. Well, during the Q&A that followed my talk and David Haig’s talk, one table spokesman got up and he said, “Our table had no sympathy for your proposal. We saw no evidence at all to think that all humanity was descended from a single couple.” And I answered, “I'm not trying to prove that all humanity is descended from a single couple. How could we possibly prove such a thing?” Science has no way of proving that at the foundations of the human race there was a single couple. Rather, my argument is that there is no incompatibility between my biblical commitment to a single couple and the scientific evidence concerning human origins. That's a very modest claim. I said, “Your table has simply misunderstood my project.” I was told later that that comment really helped to clarify things for a lot of people who had not really understood the project that I was offering. In response to another question from the floor about the nature of the soul, I was able to explain the difference between David Haig’s view of the soul and my view of the soul. I gave a little overview of the philosophy of mind and the central question of whether the mind is an immaterial substance distinct from the body. I explained the difference between anthropological dualism (which is my view) and anthropological monism or physicalism or materialism (which is Haig’s view). I explained that “soul” is just the theological word for “mind” so that mind-body dualism is soul-body dualism. I explained that soul-body dualism is another one of my biblical commitments as a Christian, and then I went on to explain that it's supported as well by good philosophical arguments with regard to free will, mental causation, intentionality, and so forth. Then after the event I stayed and had a number of good personal conversations including one with a professional philosopher. I did not meet too many faculty of philosophy at these events, but this man was a philosopher. He was not a Christian but he was absolutely elated to see a fellow philosopher discussing intelligently these issues. We had a good discussion about whether or not we need God as a foundation for objective moral values. He did not want to allow God to be the foundation for moral values and duties even though he recognized that left him with moral relativism because he said he wanted to preserve “human autonomy.” Now that was a red flag to me, and I think it was confirmed when he went on to say that he wanted the right to disobey God. I was alarmed at that, and I expressed my alarm at this. He said, “Why are you alarmed?” I said I think that's really dangerous to say that because it expresses rebellion. God is the ultimate good who deserves to be worshiped and obeyed. It is our moral duty to obey him. I suggested that our freedom to sin is all the autonomy that we need without denying that God is the basis for moral values and duties. He then asked if I held to divine command morality, and I said yes. Then he said he disagreed with that and asked me if I don't find the Euthyphro Dilemma problematic. I said, “Oh, no. Not at all.” And I referred him to William Alston's article “What Euthyphro Should Have Said” and he hadn't read it though he knew of Alston. He said he'd look it up. And so we left it at that with his expressing once again his appreciation for the evening. So it was, again, just some of the seeds that are sown. These roundtable events are just sowing and watering in the lives of these non-Christian faculty and strengthening and encouraging the Christian faculty who come. At each of the venues I felt that the evening was very profitable, very well done, and from the feedback that I've gotten the organizers felt that Christianity was ably represented at these meetings.

KEVIN HARRIS: I want to remind everyone something we've been doing every year – our matching grant program. This matching grant gives people an opportunity to double their impact.

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